Q re national curriculum - conditional tense English language

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Any experts on the national curriculum around? I have been looking at various sites and it seems that the conditional tense is not taught in years reception - year 13?

By conditional tense I mean the conjugated past and present conditional for verbs, for example would have, could have etc.

I have also noticed quite a lot about zero conditional, first conditional, second conditional etc in relation to teaching English as a second language. I was taught formal grammar which I am fairly sure did not include these ways of categorising the conditional tense, we learned the straightforward conjugated past and present conditional for verbs. Are these ways of categorising just taught to people learning English as a second language, and if so why?

Thank you very much!

I would bet money that the rate of your/you’re spelling confusion is lower in a population who pronounce them differently, yes.

I think you’re misunderstanding the descriptivist point of view.
I’m not actually against teaching kids standard English grammar.
What I am against, is telling kids the way they speak is wrong or nonsensical or ungrammatical. There is always a grammatical system even when it’s different to the system held up as the standard. Even within communities who speak something close to standard English, written grammar and spoken grammar are not the same. Try transcribing audio recordings of things like TED talks and interviews and conversations if you need an illustration.
We should be teaching basic sociolinguistic principles in schools alongside standard English grammar. It’s good for kids who speak non-standard varieties to know that they are learning to be bi or multi-dialectal. If they end up being a lawyer one day they will use one kind of English in the court room and in legal written work and another kind of English when they see their family. That doesn’t mean their is something wrong with the way they speak with their family.

Yes I don't remember being taught this at school and I suspect it's because they sounded obviously different in that specific part of the country. I now teach in an area where the accent is different to my own and find the homophone errors fascinating. Our and are sound very different when I say them but are frequently confused. I quite often have to teach lists of homophones which are definitely not homophones to me!

I haven't caught up with all posts, I was looking for the post about Thailand and just noticed this.
I come from a very unprivileged background, but was for one reason or another sent to a good school between the ages of 11 and 15, and because of that learned formal grammar and also academic skills (and also MC social skills) and because of that - and only because of that - stepped out of poverty and went to uni and then went on to gain a professional qualification - in relation to which good grammar is needed.
I can tell you absolutely that without those few years of decent education there is absolutely no possibility I would have ended up at university.
You are underestimating how important it is
You are also wrong in relation to child development - it is positive and necessary to teach children correct maths and correct grammar etc etc if you want them to thrive. You can also allow them to express themselves as they wish outside learning what is correct and what is not correct - as long as they know the difference between correct and incorrect it matters not a jot, it all adds to the rich tapestry of life and creativity. But they should know the different in the first place.
Fundamentally, 2 plus 2 is 4. It is not 5.

In relation to the "your/you're" I apologise if you thought this was a cheap jab - I never correct grammar online or otherwise (other than that of DC) other than where the conversation is about grammar - but I do think it is relevant here. 50 years ago you would have found very few people who made that mistake from any part of the country, from Scotland to Nottingham to London and it makes no difference how it is pronounced. However I apologise if my comment caused offence.

Some of the information on the web is really very, very problematic and it makes it really difficult for people who are wanting to check points. It is stressful for them and their children. That is why I think there should be one source.

To the person who I think posted that Thai does not have a conditional (I am sorry if this is wrong, I can't find the post to verify) it does indeed have a conditional.

You asked about my source, I wasn't asserting that most people want one initially, I was saying that I thought we should lobby for one because of how much wrong info there is on grammar on the net. Fundamentally wrong, not just wrong to pedantics.

If you look at the other thread I started, which I started out of interest after a conversation with an English teacher, you will see it full of posters who say that they wish they had been taught formal grammar. I have heard this a lot in real life too, from (just one example) a builder, recently. Probably not from teenagers though, and so if your experience is based on that I can understand!

It is a small minority who say that learning grammar isn't important in my experience. Thinking about my line of work, it isn't senior people, secretaries and admin staff are also required to have decent levels of grammar.

Incidentally, I don't think we need something equivalent to the academie, necessarily, I think we need something which sets out basic (correct) grammar rules and monitors and takes decisions on changes to those rules. An official authority for those who want it.

@Jovacknockowitch I now see what you mean!

That looks interesting and I will read it at some point, but in the meantime please could you reference the page and line number which supports what you said? Thank you!

Also, please could you provide your source for English being a "stripped" language? Thank you!

I feel the same about German. We were taught no English grammar at all at my comp. When we started learning German the teacher was baffled by our lack of knowledge. She had to start from scratch. Was so useful. I'm not great at grammar, but I do enjoy trying to sort it out.

OP, I have never heard of zero conditional and would have thought 1st and 2nd conditionals referred to 1st and 2nd person but have just learned otherwise.

@iverpickle I am close to someone educated in France - France still teaches formal grammar, so learning by rote etc - it is thorough and effective, not difficult or requiring hours of study or hours of homework. This is how I was taught English formal grammar - in class, just like learning any other subject, not difficult and not much homework. So I disagree with you there, personally.

I don't think it is the same thing as other cultural things such cooking either, though I agree that the UK is naturally multicultural - I agree with the other poster than we retain our traditional cuisine - think of christmas cake, mince pies, for a start - as well as embracing that of other countries. Wales has its own official language which is used alongside English in Wales - this doesn't undermine English in itself and certainly doesn't suggest that there should not be formal English grammar taught - embracing the new or different does not mean confusing the existing.

@iverpickle sorry i made a lot of mistakes in my post - I am rushing - hope it made sense notwithstanding!

Page 439 last paragraph + page 440 according the printed page numbers pages 7&8 of this extract in isolation.
I didn’t say English was a stripped language. That was a different poster. But what they mean is that English has very few inflectional morphemes. We don’t mark many grammatical processes with word ending. A huge amount of it is done through word order. This means you can’t mess around with the order words and are written in without changing meanings, but it also means there isn’t much to learn in the way of verb conjugation or case ending or noun agreement.

The thing you’re not getting is that grammar is not maths. In maths there is a correct answer because it is tied to the real world far more directly than grammar is. And even in maths there’s often more than one way to get to the right answer. If I have 2bags with 2 apples is each should I write 2+2 or 2x2 ? And language is just far more arbitrary than maths. You’ve had it drilled into you that there is one correct way to write and perhaps to speak English. When actually there are very small number of varieties of English that are held up as ´correct’ while the rest get denigrated. It is absolutely an issue of classism and cultural capital.
Think about learning to read. The more different your first dialect is to the standard English used in phonics workbooks, the harder you’re going to find the process. Same thing when it gets to sentence building - the further removed your dialect’s grammatical system is from standard English, the harder you’re going to find things.
The solution to that isn’t to teach kids ´correct grammar’ and tell them the way they speak and write is wrong. Ideally we should first teach them about dialects and let them see the logic in their own system. Then we can teach them about standard Englishes and situations where it’s advantageous to know how to use them. Yes, this means more work for kids coming from underprivileged backgrounds. But that extra work was always there. You know that. You spent your adolescence doing that extra works. We just used to hide it and blame the kids for not knowing the standard dialects they had no way of learning outside of school. We can teach the grammar of the prestige varieties of English without serving it with a side of self-hatred.
Your desire for consensus between grammatical descriptions of English is understandable but unrealistic. There’s never going to be one correct source of grammar. We already discussed ad infinitum that language changes over time, and differs from place to place and community to community. But there’s also more than one way to skin a cat (I wonder who invented that metaphor). Who’s description of English grammar should be taken as correct? You seem to think it’s an easy question and there’s always an obvious answer. Which is surprising considering the number of linguistics on the thread telling you that academics spend their lives arguing over this stuff. Look, let’s try another linguistics 101 question. - Can you tell me what a sentence is? Sounds like an easy question, but get back to me tomorrow when it’s driven you mad for hours and you’re no closer to an answer.

Thanks for the reference, I will have a look.

Re stripped language, do you have an academic source which talks about stripped language? It isn't hugely relevant to what I asked in my OP but it would still be interesting to see a source. I agree with you about noun agreement, but in relation to conjugation I think the theory is misleading but would be easier to comment after seeing the academic source.

Re Labov, who you have mentioned a few times, I haven't read him but it sounds as though it was his kind of thinking which led to teaching formal grammar being stopped in the UK in the 60s/70s, and this has been utterly disastrous for the English language. The problems caused by that still linger. Going back to your comment about your/you're I appreciate that if you weren't taught grammar at school this sort of mistake is perfectly understandable, but it isn't common amongst people who were taught formal grammar, from whatever "class". I don't think it should be glossed over as irrelevant.

I am sure what Labov said was interesting from a sociological point of view, but I don't think he should have ever been seen as relevant in relation to what we put in the NC.

I occasionally make the your/you’re mistake. I did earlier on in this thread. I am a linguist. I could dissect your secondary school grammar textbooks and tell you which rules are taken from latin-bases systems and which make sense for English. I could tell you which so called rules are routinely broken in everyday speech and which have a tendency to lead to hyper-correction. I can tell you fun factoids about just how different grammar systems are in different languages (like did you know Chinese languages don’t have verb conjugation. We could easily argue that means they don’t have grammatical tenses).
I still make the odd homophone your/you’re error that I usually catch when proof reading. And was taught the difference between the two at primary school at the height of anti-grammar teaching educational policies.
You’re so doom and gloom about the supposed state of the English language. What are you actually worried about? Is it really a rational worry? Modern English is so different to Shakespearean English that school kids need annotated copies to have a hope of understanding the story. And ´standard English’ sounds have changed so much that Shakespeare’s plays take 10 minutes or so longer to perform than they would have done when they first written. And so what?

You are so far off the mark about Labov that it’s embarrassing.

If we really want to improve educational outcomes for kids coming from maligned speech communities then what we need to do is teach teachers the local/relevant non-standard varieties of English. Then teachers will understand what students are actually saying and will be able to help them learn how to make the same point in standard varieties of English.

@SnapCrackleandStop re your more recent long post, it isn't that I am not "getting it" as you have said a few times, it is that I don't agree with you. Our mindsets are different.

Basic rules of grammar ie what is taught at school level have been around a long time and haven't changed much, and like maths, things become more interesting the more advanced you get, but in relation to what should be learned at school, it is pretty fixed and basic. Until the 1950s/60s (later in some regions) the same rules were taught to the whole country without eroding local dialects. Grammar has not substantively changed since then. I went to uni with people from other areas of the UK who could write and speak using grammar correctly but would chat away in local dialects in the pub. The two things are different.

I think that your theories about how to teach children would be very limiting for children. The language someone has available to them affects how they think - teaching complex language facilitates complex thought - it isn't possible to understand complex language without being aware of the rules and variances due to context which govern it. A knowledge of correct complex language facilitates communication and understanding, on an interpersonal level and on the international stage. English people with a good knowledge of English grammar find it much easier to learn foreign languages, compared with those who don't. "Would of" does not translate, whereas "would have" does - in pretty much every language.

Absolutely realistic to have a reliable source created.

If there were more than one way of looking at any particular point, both could be explained in the reliable source - the example which springs to mind is the use of shall vs will in relation to which the old rules are still correct and the use of the two words interchangeably is also seen as correct.

Your conundrums about sentences and the others set above - these are interesting but are not at relevant to what I am talking about. In relation to basic formal grammar the meaning of "sentence" is reasonably straightforward, and looking at the definition in a dictionary is a good start (ie in relation to teaching basic formal grammar).

Neither you nor I are necessarily right or wrong from the point of view of linguists or philosophy, or other areas of theoretical study, but I think you are wrong from the point of view of teaching children and giving everyone reliable accurate sources.

Embarrassing, really?! How so?! I said that I hadn't read him but from your description, using your description of his theories, it was due to theorists with similar ideas which led to formal grammar teaching stopping in the UK. Really not embarrassing to be pointing that out.

Teaching children other subjects using the child's level of language - good idea.

Not teaching them formal grammar and about use of language - not a good idea. How are these children going to communicate with people who have complex language available to them, if they don't understand it? How about communicating complex ideas with someone not using their local dialect, how would that be possible? Your ideas are very limiting for them.

What is the point of learning other subjects at school? Historians disagree with each other at a high level, so all teaching the basics at school is rendered irrelevant? Lawyers disagree with eachother at a high level and so learning the basics is a waste of time?

I think your thinking here is wrong.

When you actually get round to reading some Labov - even his Wikipedia bio would help - then you might understand. He cared a lot about children’s achievement in school and he was advocating for exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. In order to teach non-standard dialect speakers standard English grammar rules, the teacher and the students need to understand each other.
You keep talking about ´complex language’ as though non-standard varieties cannot be complex. This is just not true. Look up Labov’s description of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) verb constructions and you’ll see what I mean. Wikipedia will do.
I tell me I’m rude for describing it as embarrassing that you’ve written off an extremely prominent and lauded socio-linguist without reading even his Wikipedia page. I think you have absolutely no idea just how rude you’re being to speakers of non standard English varieties. If you ever bother to look into it instead of continuing to assume there’s some inherent superiority to the English you were taught at secondary school, then you may well feel that embarrassment yourself.

And again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach standard English grammar in schools. I’m saying when we do that, it’s imperative to tell children these are the rules for this prestigious variety of English but that there are also rules than govern other varieties of English and one variety is not inherently better or more correct. One just belongs to a group that holds more power in society.

I don't think that making the your/you're mistake on a MN post is a big deal. I was being snarky about comments about "linguists" by other posters, and the fact that you would like to validate "could of" and possibly irradicate the distinction between your and you're by making up new rules... I honestly do not think it is a big deal on MN posts to make mistakes as we don't sit and proof read them and I apologise if you found it rude. But NB I have found some of your comments rude too.

Not sure what point you are making about Shakespeare's language. We don't use some of Jane Austen's language nowadays either. But their use of language was extraordinary and it is worth learning to understand what they wrote in their own language.

Not doom and gloom. Seeing a problem and thinking about solutions.

Not teaching them formal grammar and about use of language - not a good idea. How are these children going to communicate with people who have complex language available to them, if they don't understand it? How about communicating complex ideas with someone not using their local dialect, how would that be possible? Your ideas are very limiting for them.

But loads of people can use and understand complex language without knowing the metalanguage of how to describe it. Native language speakers can have a high ability without ever knowing what a preposition or past participle is. People learn to code switch without knowing there's a term for it. I grew up knowing I shouldn't use slang or dialect in written work at school - I didn't know the difference between slang and dialect, but I knew they were not standard.

I think people are missing out if they don't know the intricacies of grammatical structures, but in the same way, I don't really give much thought to the differences between different networking protocols, and undoubtedly it would enhance aspects of my work if I did. It's just something I find deathly dull and can look up if I really need to. And a lot of people are like that with grammar. Obviously they're wrong, but people are allowed to be wrong. 😉

I’m trying to pinpoint the imaginary era where you think everyone wrote and perhaps spoke English ´right’.
I think you’ve been spectacularly rude to me, to be honest. You’ve questioned my qualifications based on a proofreading error. You’ve asked me for academic sources and then refused to bother reading any of them. You’re not actually listening to any of the points I’ve been trying to make about how language change works and how grammar is not just conscious knowledge of rules from a textbook but also largely unconscious knowledge that governs how we speak as well as write. You’ve made a giant erroneous leap about how and why grammar teaching fell out of fashion.
Why? Perhaps because, in your mind, English is going to the dogs because there was a period of time where pupils were taught less formal grammar at school?

I have an interesting thought experiment for you; what would happen if we got rid of all the spelling distinctions in French (or English) that distinguish grammatical or lexical forms in written language but not spoken language?
If it helps you could imagine using phonetic symbols instead of the current orthographic systems so that in written language you would see all the sound differences that distinguish grammatical or lexical forms that can’t be seen in written language currently.

People who know the spelling distinctions will understand spoken complex language better and therefore will understand more and more quickly in spoken language. Using phonetic spellings would cause even more confusion given that so many of our words sound the same in spoken language. It would mean that the next generation would not be able to read history or literature accurately.

Getting rid of it as you suggest and getting rid of the formal teaching would be taking us back to stone age levels of communication.

Back in the days of jingoistic colonisation we judged other nations on (our understanding of) their language - if we judged their language as less complex than our own we judged the people as less intelligent. I don't think your idea would do England's reputation on the world stage much good if other nations applied similar reasoning to ours.

Except that, I also think that there would always be an elite who knew how the language was supposed to work, so you would be creating a tiny elite with power and the masses who would only be able to communicate with very, very basic language and would struggle to learn.

In relation to your concern about teaching formal language propulagating the language of the elite, I think your solution here would make the situation worse not better. Teaching the language of the educated classes enables everyone to have a choice of joining the educated classes.

Do you see positives and think it would be a good idea though? If so, can you explain?

You know that speech came first, right? Written language has a tendency to slow down language change. And different grammatical constructions are more efficient in different modes. In speech, we are limited by how long we can hold elements in memory and by the fact we can’t go back and reread words. In writing, we haven’t got access to intonation in the same way, and pausing and rhythm are codified in a much less flexible and expressive manner.
Anyway, if we started writing everything phonetically it would be like a reset button on written language. We would lose some grammatical distinctions that are no longer audible. But then the system would stabilize again. Like we’d lose the link between ´could of/ could’ve´ and ´could have’. It might turn into one word, but would probably still function the same as it does now.